Albert Bold Article
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http://www.smokeandthrottle.com/ MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012 "Crazy" Albert Bold and his MV Agusta's There are people, who along the way, have advised me that I cannot do everything on a motorcycle rebuild. Certain things, like fabricating and paint are better left to specialists. Albert Bold was once told that as well and he ignored them. A highly modified MV Albert is currently working on for a customer. Raised in the depths of Ed LaBelle's infamous motorcycle shop in Philadelphia PA, Albert has been getting his hands dirty from an age where he still needed a stool just to wash them in a sink. Cutting his teeth on projects no one else wanted to handle (like welding up and rethreading the exhaust spigots on a stripped out triumph head,) he got to know the machine shop tools and their capabilities.... and how to exceed them. When Albert got into vintage road racing, he needed some pipes and disk brakes. Some handrails from a pool ladder for the pipes and a few manhole covers machined down for disks did the trick - so well that his brake systems was banned from AHRMA as it was considered an unfair advantage after Al lapped the third place rider twice at Road Atlanta. "I didn't even use the brakes" defends Albert "it was full throttle all the way. I was running on three out of four cylinders and I was trying to catch Jesse Morris on his Rob North Trident. I had him in the corners, but with only three cylinders, he always pulled away on the straights". Albert runs a machine shop in Kimberton PA, fittingly named Bold Precision. He makes bicycle parts (his other passion) and works on MV Agusta's for racers around the world. His specialty is fabricating repopped titanium and magnesium parts - though he really has no particular specialty as he can do it all. some tools of the trade Alberts infamous race bike waiting for rebuild. He also used it as a daily commuter! Lightened and modified OHC drive Extremely lightened gear selector using top secret metal Just one of the many machines in Alberts shop Albert shows us a bike he recently finished for another customer. Below is an article written on Albert a number of years ago. Read it, re read it and get inspired. Nothing is impossible. Australian Cycle NewsVol. 47 No 23, May 15-28, 1998 Crazy Albert's MV Racer Test By Alan Cathcart Albert Bold is one of those do-it-yourself engineers who borders on the edge of eccentricity. I wouldn't call Albert Bold eccentric, more just plain crazy. How else can you explain that messianic light shining in those deep, blue eyes - proof of his abiding love for all things red, loud and Made in Italy. A John-Boy Walton lookalike, some years on and thin on top, Albert's craziness manifests itself in all sorts of ways, and is mostly to do with two wheels. Not many people in the USA use the bike they go vintage racing with to commute to work on a daily basis, still less when it's a tricked-out four- cylinder MV Agusta special with open megaphones and a first gear high enough to break the speed limit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike without shifting up. Crazy Albert does. Equally few people are such committed street squirrels they'd rather ride everywhere at full tilt, even in a land like radar infested USA. Crazy Albert does. Still fewer people are skilled enough machinists to scorn the idea of buying hardware like brake discs or exhaust pipes off the shelf, preferring to manufacture them themselves - like Crazy Albert does. Which is how come the city of Philadelphia came to find itself short a few cast-iron manhole covers, which Albert gradually ground down into brake rotors for his MV. As for the MV's exhaust headers, they come courtesy of some tubular ladders from the local swimming pool. LARGER THAN LIFE When I first wrote about Albert Bold after testing his MV Agusta vintage racer more than a decade ago, I know many people who'd never met him were convinced I was exaggerating: "This guy's not for real, surely?!" Those who know him on the other hand thought the story rather understated - Albert is one of those genuinely larger than life characters America seems to produce. Well, some years on, Albert's moved onwards and upwards. He and his long- suffering partner no longer live on the wrong side of the tracks in one of the more questionable neighborhoods of Philly, complete with TIG-welder, tube- bender and other engineering equipment crammed into the basement. Albert has now relocated to a small farm in the rural Pennsylvania countryside, but he still produces metalwork that can only be described as an art form. He has earned a top reputation among that most demanding of engineering fraternities, the drag racing establishment - as well as amond many North American Superbike teams, and historic racing pacesetter Team Obsolete. He still has the remains of half-a-dozen late '60's MV 600cc fours littering his storeroom, including that unloved and unlovely square-headlamped model, which may well have been the first four-cylinder across-the-frame motorcycle to be offered in series production form for the street. GRAND PRIX ROOTS Underneath that ugly duckling exterior, though, lay some GP-class engineering. The mid-60's MV Agusta 600 was hand-built by the same team that brought Count Agusta so many race wins and world titles over a quarter- century of competition, and defeated Honda's best efforts to win the 500cc world title. Such heritage explains Bold's fanatical desire to go racing with a more modern MV - the same desire that drove Clausio Castiglioni and his brother to found the Cagiva operation 20 years ago and build their own red and silver 500cc racer after failing to acquire the defunct MV Agusta race team. "The MV has so much mystique attached to it," says Albert, whose passion for the marque first saw the construction of the 600-based MV Agusta special that took him to two successive Vintage racing titles in the mid-80's. "You can pull a stock MV out of the truck in any race paddock and people will flock to it, just because it's an MV. "After I built the first one and did some good with it, I always had the idea to go a stage further and build my own chassis, maybe a little more modern and a lot lighter. It's kind of like my own rolling calling card, to show the work in various metals that I can do. "Originally I was going to buy all the good stuff from Italy, but then people kept coming by and saying why didn't I make my own brake calipers and exhausts, stuff like that. So I did!" LONG TIME COMING "It took far longer than I intended - but I've had a real good time creating my own personal motorcycle around the engine I respect most in the world - an MV Agusta." His old title-winning racer scaled a massive 215kg dry, while the stock 600 MV frame it used kept cracking the front downtubes under the braking forces generated by the combination of modern sticky tyres and those manhole- sourced brakes. "This time I used 4130 chrome-moly steel tubing with as much triangulation as possible, and tried to run the frame tubes close to the engine to give it more rigidity," says Albert. "The frame doesn't flex like before and at 6.8kg it's a lot lighter." At the same time, he increased the wheelbase from the stubby 1370mm of the first bike to a longer-legged 1450mm, though without really improving the very cramped riding position - something I found for myself when I came to sample the Bold MV Agusta Superbike on only its second visit to a racetrack, at Loudon, New Hampshire. Considering Albert's even lankier than I am, I can't quite figure out how he gets all his limbs in the right places. However you do it you can't help but end up with your chin over the triple clamps and your knees up around your ears. EXOTIC MATERIALS The bike is very small and low compared to other four-cylinder MV roadster- derived bikes, but Albert's succeeded in putting his new creation on a diet compared to the old one - it weighs 151kg with a 50/50 weight distribution, a massive 40 percent lighter than the old bike. Slashing the weight has been achieved (in spite of the heavy sandcast crankcases and other tooroom components in the MV engine) thanks to Albert's use of some pretty exotic metallurgy for what is after all a home-built special. The rods and torque arms for the MV's mechanical anti-dive system - first used in the mid-'70s on the Geitl/Schuster BMW Superbike (and later copied by Kawasaki on its 500cc GP bike) - are made in titanium, as are the jackshafts driving the oil pump and Scintilla Vertex magneto, and the front and rear brake assemblies, including the self-made titanium calipers. It doesn't end there. Bold also painstakingly milled the clutch and brake levers, the brake master-cylinders and the 35mm Marzocchi forks' triple- clamps all from solid billets of aircraft alloy, as well as the front hubs, to which he laced a pair of 18-inch Akront rims, again to comply with Vintage racing rules.